reading

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Fatima Farheen Mirza has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

For my parents, Shereen & Mohammed, who taught me that love is an ever-expanding force

And for my brothers, Mohsin, Ali-Moosa, Mahdi, who call me home

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

—WALT WHITMAN, “TO A STRANGER”

AS AMAR WATCHED the hall fill with guests arriving for his sister’s wedding, he promised himself he would stay. It was his duty tonight to greet them. A simple task, one he told himself he could do well, and he took pride in stepping forward to shake the hands of the men or hold his hand over his heart to pay the women respect. He hadn’t expected his smile to mirror those who seemed happy to see him. Nor had he anticipated the startling comfort in the familiarity of their faces. It had really been three years. Had it not been for his sister’s call, he might have allowed even more years to pass before summoning the courage to return.

He touched his tie to make sure it was centered. He smoothed down his hair, as if a stray strand would be enough to call attention, give him away. An old family friend called out his name and hugged him. What would he tell them if they asked where he had been, and how he was doing? The sounds of the shenai started up to signal the commencement of Hadia’s wedding and suddenly the hall was brought to life. There, beneath the golden glow of the chandeliers and surrounded by the bright colors of the women’s dresses, Amar thought maybe he had been right to come. He could convince them all—the familiar faces, his mother who he sensed checking on him as she moved about, his father who maintained his distance—he could even convince himself, that he belonged here, that he could wear the suit and play the part, be who he had been before, and assume his role tonight as brother of the bride.

IT HAD BEEN Hadia’s decision to invite him. She watched her sister Huda get ready and hoped it had not been a mistake. That morning Hadia had woken with her brother on her mind and all day she willed herself to think as other brides must—that she would be using the word husband when speaking of Tariq now, that after years of wondering if they would make it to this moment, they had arrived. What she had not even dared to believe possible for her was coming true: marrying a man she had chosen for herself.

Amar had come as she had hoped. But when she was shocked at the sight of him she realized she never actually believed he would. Three years had passed with no news from him. On the day she told her parents she would invite him she had not allowed herself to pray, Please God, have him come, but only, Please God, let my father not deny me this. She had practiced her words until her delivery was so steady and confident any onlooker would think she was a woman who effortlessly declared her wishes.

Huda finished applying her lipstick and was fastening the pin of her silver hijab. She looked beautiful, dressed in a navy sari stitched with silver beadwork, the same sari that a handful of Hadia’s closest friends would be wearing. There was an excitement about her sister that Hadia could not muster for herself.

Huda held her arm up to slip rows of silver bangles over her wrist, each one falling with a click. She turned from the mirror to face Hadia.

Hadia studied her hands, covered in dark henna. She pressed her fingernails into her arm.

An obvious statement, but it was true. It did not matter if she had not heard from her brother in years, she could not imagine this day without him. But relief at the sight of Amar brought with it that old shadow of worry for him.

“Will you call him here?” Hadia said. “And when he comes, will you give us a moment alone?”

She returned Huda’s gaze then. And though Huda looked briefly hurt, she didn’t ask Hadia to share what she was, and always had been, excluded from.

AS SHE GLIDED between guests and stopped to hug women she had not yet greeted, it occurred to Layla that this was what she might have pictured her life to look like once, when her children were young and she knew who her family would contain but not what life would be like for them. She walked with a straight back and careful smile and felt this event was hers as much as it was her daughter’s. And Amar was nearby. She looked to him between conversations, tracked his movement across the hall, checked his face for any displeasure.

The wedding was coming together wonderfully. People were arriving on time. There was a table for mango juice and pineapple juice and another for appetizers, replenished as soon as the items were lifted from the platter. White orchids spilled from tall glass vases on every table. Little golden pouches of gifts waited on each seat for guests to claim. Huda had helped Layla make them and they had stayed awake late into the night, singing a little as they filled each one with almonds and various chocolates. The hall was grand—she had chosen it with Hadia months ago—and as she walked beneath its arches into the main hall she was pleased with her decision. It had been dimmer when they first saw it, but now it looked like the set of a movie, high ceilings and every chandelier twinkling so bright they seemed to compete with one another to illuminate the room. Men looked sharp in their dark suits and sherwanis, women dressed so that every shade of color was represented, light reflecting off of their beadwork and threadwork. Layla wished her parents had been alive to see it. How proud they would be, how happy to attend the wedding of their first grandchild. But tonight even their absence could not dull all she had to be grateful for, and beneath her breath she continued to repeat, God is Great. God is Great, and all thanks are to Him.

Just an hour earlier she had helped Hadia into the heavy kharra dupatta, whispered prayers as she clasped safety pins in place. Hadia had not spoken as Layla moved about her, only thanked her once, quietly. She was nervous, as any bride would be, as Layla herself had been years ago. Layla adjusted the outfit’s pleats, hooked a teekah into Hadia’s hair, and stepped back to take in the sight of her daughter. All her intricate henna. Her jewelry catching light.

Now she searched the crowd for her son. It felt unfathomable that just days ago she still had trouble sleeping when the darkness called forth her unsettling fears. In the daylight she could reassure herself that it was enough to see her son’s face in the photographs she saved, hear his voice in the family videos she watched—Amar on a field trip she had chaperoned, his excitement when the zookeeper lifted up a yellow python, how his hand was the first to shoot into the air, asking to touch it. It was enough so long as she knew he was still out there, heart beating, mind moving in the way she never understood.

But this morning she had woken to a home complete. Before her children could rise she took out sadqa money for them, extra because it was a momentous day, then more, to protect from any comment about her son’s return in a tone that could threaten its undoing. She drove to a grocery store and stocked the fridge with food Amar enjoyed: green apples and cherries, pistachio ice cream with almonds, cookies with the white cream center. All the snacks she once scolded him for. Was she cruel to feel more happiness, greater relief, at his return, than for her daughter on the day he had come back for? Before Rafiq left to oversee arrangements in the hall—the tables brought in, golden bows tied to the chairs, the setting of the stage where Hadia and Tariq would sit—Layla climbed the stairs to their bedroom, where he was getting ready.

“Suno,” she said, “will you listen? Can you not say anything that will anger or upset him?”

She always found ways to speak around her husband’s name. First it was out of shyness and then it was out of custom and a deep respect for him, and now it would be unnatural; she felt obliged to avoid his name out of habit. He paused buttoning his shirt and looked at her. It was her right. She had not interfered with his decisions for so long. She pressed on. “Please, for me, can you stay away from him tonight? We can speak tomorrow, but let us have this day.”

The previous night, when Amar first arrived, the two of them had been amicable. Rafiq had said salaam before Layla took over and guided Amar to his bedroom, heated him a plate of dinner.

For a moment, she wondered if she had hurt Rafiq. Carefully he clasped the button at each wrist.

“I will not go near him, Layla,” he said finally, dropping his arms to his sides.

WHEN HE MET his father’s eyes from across the crowded hall, Amar understood that an agreement had been made between them: they knew who they were there for, and why they would not approach one another beyond the expected salaam. Amar looked away first. He still felt it. His anger, and the distance it caused. It was as if something had clenched in him and could not now be loosened.

Amar had played a game during the first few conversations when asked what he had been doing lately. A painter, he said to one guest, of sunsets and landscapes. The look on their faces amused him. To another uncle he said engineer but was annoyed by how it impressed him. Once he said he was pursuing an interest in ornithology. When the man blinked back at him he explained. Birds, I would like to study birds. Now he spoke without embellishment. He excused himself from conversations shortly after they began.

He stepped out beneath the arched doorway, past the children playing, past the elevators, until the shenai quieted. He had forgotten what it was like to move through a crowd feeling like a hypocrite among them, aware of the scrutinizing gaze of his father, expecting Amar to embarrass him, anticipating the lie he would tell before he even spoke. He walked until he found himself standing before the bar on the other side of the hotel. Of course, no one invited to Hadia’s wedding would dare come here. The sound of the shenai was so far away he could catch it only if he strained to hear. He took a seat beside two strangers. Tonight, even that felt like a betrayal. But taking a seat was not the same as ordering a drink. He leaned forward until he could rest his elbows on the counter, lowered his face into his hands and sighed.

He could hardly believe that, just the night before, he had managed to walk up to the door of his childhood home and knock. What had surprised him was how little had changed—the same tint of paint at nighttime, the same screen missing from his old window on the second floor. There were no lights on. Wide windows, curtains drawn, nobody home. Nobody would know if he decided to step back into the street. It was a comforting thought—that he would not have to face his father or see how his absence had impacted his mother. The moon was almost full in the sky, and as he had when he was a child, he looked first for the face his schoolteacher had said he could find there, then for the name in Arabic his mother always pointed out proudly. Finding them both, he almost smiled.

He might have walked away were it not for a light turning on in Hadia’s room. It glowed teal behind the curtain and the sight of it was enough to make his chest lurch. She was home. He had made his life one that did not allow him to see or speak to his sister, to even know she was getting married until she had called him a month earlier, asking him to attend. He had been so startled he didn’t pick up. But he listened to her voicemail until he had memorized the details, felt sure some nights he would return and on other nights knew no good would come of it.

Her lit window and his own dark beside it. One summer they had pushed out their screens and connected their rooms by a string attached to Styrofoam cups at each end. Hadia assured him she knew what she was doing. She had made one in school. He wasn’t sure if he could hear her voice humming along the string and filling the cup, or carried through the air, but he didn’t tell her this. They pretended a war was coming to their neighborhood. This was Hadia’s idea—she had always been brilliant at thinking up games. They were in an observation tower making sure nothing was amiss. Bluebird on branch, Amar said, looking out the window before crouching down again, over. Mailman driving down the street, Hadia said, lots of letters, over.

That night their father had been furious to find the screens discarded on the driveway, one of them bent from the fall. The three of them were made to stand in a line. Hadia, the eldest, then Huda, then Amar, the youngest, hiding a little behind them both.

It was true. It had been his idea to push out the screens. Hadia stared at the floor. Huda nodded. Hadia glanced at her but said nothing.

Amar had sulked to his bedroom, closed his open window, sunk onto his cold sheets. Nothing was expected of him. And though Hadia never pushed her screen out again, he had, every few years, until his father gave up on repairing it entirely.

Amar looked up and shook his head. It wouldn’t have been so bad to say yes. It might have even been better for him and everyone else. A drink would calm his nerves, and maybe he could enjoy the colors and the appetizers and the sorrowful shenai. But he had come home for his mother’s sake, his sister’s sake, and this night was the only one asked of him.

All day he had feared his sister might have only called him out of obligation, and suspected that maybe it was that same sense of duty that had brought him back. Now something swelled up in him, not quite excitement or happiness, but a kind of hope. He stood and stepped back toward the music. His sister, surrounded by close friends and family, was asking for him.

ANY MINUTE NOW Amar would knock and the important thing was not to respond to him the way she had the night before, when she was so stunned she could not speak. She should have been kinder. Three years had changed her brother, lent seriousness to his features, shadows pressed beneath his eyes, a fresh scar on his chin to join the old ones by his lip and eyebrow. He seemed to slouch and she realized that his confidence had left him, as though confidence were a physical feature as much a part of him as his winning half-smile. But what pained her was how small his face had become, the pronounced bone of his shoulder and collarbone visible even through his T-shirt, and the fear that accompanied the sight: he was still trying to disappear. Tonight, she would keep her observations to herself and welcome him with a smile. Hadia sat still as she waited, not wanting to disturb her clothes. The slightest movement caused the pleats to shift and scrape against each other. The ghoongat draped over her head was surprisingly heavy, the teekah moved if she turned her head abruptly, the choker-like necklace pinched her neck. When she looked in the mirror she barely recognized herself.

A knock at the door. Even if she had not been waiting for him, she would have known it was Amar, always hesitant at first tap, a brief pause, and then two louder taps. Huda let him in and Hadia overheard Huda thank Amar in the reserved way she spoke to those she was unfamiliar with. Then the click of the door closing and Amar appeared and he had washed his face and combed his hair, dressed in a black suit and found a tie to match. She patted the space beside her but he stayed standing.

“I might have told Samir Uncle I’m trying to paint professionally.” He twisted his mouth and pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, the way he so often did when he was lying or was nervous, completely unaware of his habit, and this instantly endeared him to Hadia. It was him. Her brother. The expression was an exaggerated version of itself—his jaw had become defined, cheeks hollow, but it was his unmistakable, signature look.

She tried to say his name in a scolding tone but began laughing at the thought of Samir Uncle, the most gullible friend of their father’s. The old Hadia would have told him to be careful—that everyone either would know he was lying right away or would soon find out. But she was not sure anymore what she could tease him about without causing offense. Again she tapped at the spot beside her.

“Not too much?” She lifted her decorated arms that looked like they belonged to someone else, gestured to her jewelry. He shook his head.

He looked surprised for a moment. Then he smiled. “Now I’m not the only one who has disappointed them.”

Was their laughter born of ease or discomfort? Amar took a seat by her. A boyishness still lingered in the way he carried himself. You won’t tell Baba, will you, he would ask her, each time he snuck out telling her to leave his window open, or anytime she caught him smoking. Always the same look on his face. Always the big brown eyes. All those nights she had spent waiting at the window for him, tracing the little etching he had carved on his windowsill, tensing each time there was a creak in the house that could be their parents waking to discover them. As the years passed he stopped waiting for her answer—he did not doubt her, he already knew, had always known, that she would never tell.

He hadn’t hesitated. His tone so sincere she felt sure she had been right to invite him. She explained to him that she would soon walk downstairs with her eyes downcast, with only Huda to guide her. Her closest friends would be holding a red net cloth above her as she walked through the crowd to the edge of the stage, where Baba would be waiting to lead her up the stairs to Tariq.

She reached over to put her hand over his. It did not matter if the old way between them was gone and a new way would have to be found; it was a comfort to sit next to him, the kind of comfort only possible between two people who had been in each other’s earliest memories.

“I have something for you,” Amar said, reaching into his suit pocket and pulling out a small, messily taped package. “But don’t open it yet.”

He placed it in her hand. She shook it a little, tried to guess what it could be. She tucked it in her purse and told him it would be the first gift she opened. He was solemn, looking down at his own lap. Then came the knock at the door. Amar helped her stand. When they opened the door, Mumma’s eyes filled at the sight of her. Huda too had to touch beneath her eyes with her knuckle, and this surprised her, Huda being the one among them who was never emotional, and Hadia nudged her as if to say not you too.

And everything Hadia had not been thinking of all day rushed toward her, and she told herself: Huda is asking you if you are ready to go downstairs and walk through the hall, and if you nod yes to this, then it means you want to be with Tariq, you are ready to be. To him and to that life, she nodded yes.

The photographer lifted his camera. Her mother touched Hadia’s forehead with her index finger and traced Ya Ali in Arabic, the gesture done for her protection and luck before every first day of school, every big exam, any flight she had to catch. Something about the movement of her mother’s finger on her forehead, the look of concentration on her face as she prayed, calmed and comforted Hadia. Even if she could not bring herself to pray for grand things, she could trust her mother’s faith, depend on her mother’s belief. Mumma fixed her ghoongat so that half of Hadia’s face was hidden for the entrance. Huda took the crook of her arm. Before taking a step Hadia turned to Amar and held her other arm out until he took it.

Her wedding was both a celebration of the life she was about to embark upon and a night to mark the departure from her old life at home. Her friends waited by the elevator and stretched their arms high to hold the red cloth like a canopy above her. The cloth filtered the light red and had little mirrors sewn into it that threw sparkles on the carpet. The drummer began to drum for her arrival and she felt the beating in her whole body. She stepped forward.

They entered the hall and on the periphery she could see the rows of tables, people seated in chairs whispering, taking photos that flashed. They stopped walking and her friends removed the red cloth and the light was suddenly golden and warm. Huda whispered in her ear, “You can look up now.”

Baba was holding his hand out for her, a look of tenderness on his face she swore she had never seen before. Baba kissed her forehead softly so that the jewels of the teekah did not dig into her skin and Hadia was surprised by how deeply cared for it made her feel. He led her up the stairs to the stage. And there was Tariq, and the drummer stilled his beat, and she was struck by how handsome Tariq looked in the light, handsome in the cream-colored sherwani he wore, and she prayed, Please God, let me remember this. When their eyes met he grinned and she knew: I chose this. I chose him. This is my life. I did not think it would be possible for me. But it is. It will be.

SOMEONE HAD SPILLED water on the front of her sari and it bloomed into a dark, embarrassing splotch. Layla excused herself to try and dry it as best as she could. She hoped this fabric was not the kind that stained after it got wet. There were pictures they needed to take. She wanted one good family photo to replace the one that hung in their living room. It was about time she took it down. She had not changed a single photo since Amar left. She glanced once more at her daughter seated on the stage next to Tariq, a modest gap between them until the nikkah was complete. The two of them were smiling and speaking discreetly. They looked like a king and queen of an ancient, magnificent time. She walked quickly with her head down and burned with pride when she overheard a table of women saying how luminous the bride looked.

Never had she looked at her daughter with as much awe as when Hadia stepped from the hotel room, looking both mature and ready for this step and also like that hesitant, wide-eyed girl she had dropped off on the first day of kindergarten. How long she and Rafiq had waited for this moment. It had come later than she might have wanted—her daughter would soon be twenty-seven, and with every year that passed her worry had grown, especially when attending the weddings of younger and younger girls, while Hadia insisted her priority was finishing her studies. But there was much to be thankful for. Tariq was respectful, an educated young man. Layla reminded herself that he was the kind of man they had wanted for her. Rafiq too had taken to him more than he liked to admit.

The air was cool in the bathroom, the light dim, and for the first time in hours Layla was alone. Her face relaxed. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. She dabbed at her sari with tissues but the stain remained. She would have to wait. She massaged her face in the mirror, starting with her cheeks, then moving to the back of her neck, where she always suffered a dull pain. She wanted to find Rafiq and see if he was happy, wanted to say, Look what we have done together.

Rafiq had been so quiet when he came home from the hall earlier, Layla could not read him. And the small progress she had made with Amar, walking in the garden together, showing him the suit he would wear—it was all undone when Rafiq came home and Amar fell silent. The only men she had left in this world to love and neither of them knew how to be with one another. Just before they left for the wedding hall, Layla laid out her prayer rug upstairs, then Rafiq’s just a few steps in front of hers. It was the time of day she looked forward to most, and even though nothing passed between them there was still a sense of peace, a feeling of unity. She had been the one to teach her children how to pray. The girls had been easy, but Amar was different. He had copied her every movement, looked up at the way she cupped her hands to the sky and did the same, made whispering noises even though he had not memorized the surahs, and at the end she told him it was time to speak his wishes directly to God, and he asked for the lollipops that were green apple and dipped in caramel.

“But you can ask for anything,” she said, half hoping he would. She disliked those lollipops the most because the caramel got stuck in his teeth.

“If I ask for only one thing, then it is more likely to come true,” he said.

She was amazed. She did not know. He was six or seven years old then and asking her a question she had not thought to ask all her life. Nor had Hadia or Huda ever questioned her. And Amar had been right without knowing it: the next day she went to the grocery store and bought the smallest bag she could find of those terrible lollipops, tucked them beneath his pillow. He had asked for something so easily granted, and she thought that maybe if she gave it to him at that impressionable age he would pray wholeheartedly. They were told not to question the way God worked, not to think too much into it. That it was a mystery. And she was happy to think of it as such. She pictured a dark sky with the fog in front of it, how her mother had once explained it to her: we don’t have to see past the fog to know there are stars.

She studied her reflection now. Her sari had dried as best as it would. She adjusted her hijab to hide the remaining stain, and reapplied some lipstick. When she returned to the hall, the hadith-e-kisa was being recited and soon it would be her favorite verse: that God had created the blue sky, and the changing landscapes, the bright moon and the burning sun, the rotating planets and flowing seas and the ships on them sailing—all out of love for the five beneath the blanket, the Prophet, his son-in-law Imam Ali, his daughter Bibi Fatima, and his grandsons, Hassan and Hussain.

She searched the crowd for Rafiq and found him at the other end of the hall, seated at a table, his head bowed in respect. He looked content. She would go to him once the recitation was complete. She would say: We did this. We created this. These children who are adults now. What is the use of all this living if we don’t stop once in a while to notice what is actually happening—our daughter on-stage, our son safe, and all our friends and family, who have traveled miles to gather in this hall, just to celebrate with us?

HE NEEDED TO feel the cool breeze on his face. To be away from anyone who might try to speak to him. Maybe a nice sky to look up at, if the haze of the streetlights didn’t dim the stars too much. Amira Ali was there. They had not made eye contact but he was certain she had seen him. How could she not have? All around him, the people were indistinguishable from one another—shades of blue, green, yellow—and then that jolt at the sight of her. But while everyone else’s face was turned to watch the bride enter, Amira had been facing the stage, looking, if he were to guess, at either his father or Tariq.

He had known there was a chance she would come, had told himself that he would get through the night with or without her possible presence. He drew a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. It had been the line of her neck, the curve of her cheek, her chin, the shock of her dark, dark hair. He had to remind himself to keep walking until they reached the stage, and then he had forced himself not to look back. Just waited until Hadia had taken her seat beside Tariq before slipping from the hall, looking only at the shine of his shoes.

When he was sitting with Hadia in her hotel room, it had occurred to him he knew nothing of the man she was about to marry. It felt too late to be concerned, or worse, like he had lost the right to feel concerned. But Hadia had not only invited him, she had also asked him to participate, to stand by her and Huda. He knew she didn’t have to do that. He had been so nervous when he went to her room, afraid she would ask a question he did not want to answer, but she had spared him any discomfort. The least he could do now was compose himself. He crushed the cigarette with his shoe and then lit another.

Earlier that morning, alone in his old room, he had locked the door behind him. He had opened his closet and parted his clothes—from what he could tell, all of them still there—and stepped into the recess. And there it was, behind extra comforters and unused suitcases, his black keepsake box, exactly as he had left it. For a moment he just touched the soft leather surface. He had always known he would come back one day, if only to reclaim it. He knew the combination of the lock by heart. The click of the lock unlatching. He sat and reacquainted himself with the mementos of his old life: journals, foolish poems he had written, poems he saved by others, photographs he stole from family albums, until he found in an envelope taped for extra security, the letters written in Amira’s delicate handwriting and the photographs of her looking back at him, or lifting her hand to hide her face. He could tell he had taken them, not only because he remembered every movement toward her and every movement away, but because it would be apparent to anyone who saw them that they were taken by someone who looked at her with love. He knew if he read the letters, his determination to attend would leave him, and so he had put them back still folded, carefully closed the lid, and snapped the lock shut.

His head throbbed. He had not come this far for nothing. The dua that had been about to start when he left the hall would end soon. He closed his eyes and saw redness, the swarming insides of his eyelids when he pressed his eyes with his thumb and index finger, the color of his sister’s kharra dupatta, the color that had risen to Amira’s cheeks when he had opened the door to her, long before they had begun talking, and he had complimented her for the first time, something small like I like your shoes and, as he would later learn, because she was unable to conceal anything, her face had burned.

AT THE APPETIZER table he busied himself by filling his plate with samosas and small chunks of tandoori chicken. He wanted to mask the smell of alcohol on his breath, wanted to make sure he had something in his system to dull its effect. He felt calmer. But he should not have gone back to the bar. Less than one hour here and he had already made a mistake. The rest of the night he would abide by their rules. For his mother, for his sister. Her hello caught him by surprise. A jolt like the one before. He looked up to see Amira standing only a few feet away. She picked up a plate, slowly, as if still deliberating, and offered him a smile. He replied to her hello. He was afraid to meet her eyes for too long and focused instead on her wrists lined with red and golden bangles, how they slid on her arms as she moved her plate around. He felt far from his legs, so he tried to stand very still. He looked up at the chandelier, then at the colors that shifted around him. How deliberately and desperately he did not want to look at her. The trick was to appear as though he felt nothing.

Soon they were standing side by side. She set a single samosa at the center of her plate. When she opted for the mint sauce, he felt an unexpected sadness at having predicted it. She turned to face him. Her hair fell across her face and formed a curtain over her eye. He wanted to reach out and tuck it back into place behind her ear. But he could not touch her anymore. He signaled to his own forehead, and she, perhaps also remembering how often he would move her hair from her face, immediately mirrored him and swept it away. A light color rose to her cheeks. He had missed this. A heavier silence ensued, both now painfully aware they still shared a language they should have long since forgotten.

THEY ARE ALL waiting on the damp lawn for the sky to light up, at a park near their home on the Fourth of July. How they got there is a miracle. It is the first Fourth of July Hadia remembers coming even close to celebrating, and this—sitting and blinking at the empty sky—feels like a feat. Just an hour earlier, when the sun slipped away, they began begging Baba to take them to watch the fireworks, and he was reluctant, telling them that people would be out drinking and they could watch just fine on their television screen. But even Amar, too young to fully understand what he was asking for, repeated please, please, please like it was one long word until Baba said fine, let’s go.

Hadia and Huda are holding hands and sitting cross-legged. Indian-style, her friends call it, and she does not know what this means or why it makes her feel a tiny bit strange. Just a tiny bit. They have laid their jackets down like blankets, spread their sleeves out like the points of stars. Baba is beside her. He scans the park, his gaze rests on other families who have brought collapsible chairs and thick, checkered blankets. Families that smell like popcorn and hold red cups that look purple in the dark. Mumma is next to Huda and Amar is next to Mumma, leaning on her with his thumb in his mouth. Then there is a bang and a streak of light hisses up, and when it is far past the tops of trees it explodes with a pop—and it is a firework, the exact kind she has seen frozen in pictures. Huda lets go of her hand and claps and shrieks. One after another they pop. Hisses and booms and all the while it feels like each sound is in her own body. That is how loud it is. Amar holds on to his ears but his eyes are wide with wonder, and not terror. Hadia notices that she can follow the tiny flare of light as it shoots into the sky before it explodes into a firework. She tries to watch with her mouth closed, because she is seven years old and not a baby anymore, but she can’t, she keeps smiling until her cheeks hurt and sometimes she says “oh wow” without meaning to.

Each one is different. Some light the whole sky a bright green, as if it were a haunted time of day. And Hadia is grateful for their yellow sun, its rays a blinding white. Some of them die so soon and others fall softly, become specks that look like bigger stars. These are her favorite—the delicate golden ones that burst and stay, their twinkling tails slowly dissolving. Smoke lingers. Amar hasn’t taken his cupped hands off of his ears but he giggles at the ones that sound like rockets, the ones that fizzle out in coils, and Mumma is holding him in her lap now, her arms wrapped around his body like she is hugging him, her chin resting on his head. It feels like the show has been going on for so long. Like it will go on forever. Each explosion makes her a little afraid: what if the tops of trees catch on fire, or what if the flame, which feels so close, lands on their jackets?

“How will we know when the finale comes?” Huda whispers into her ear. Her voice tickles Hadia’s hair, her neck. At home they convinced Baba to come by telling him about it, how there were a bunch of little fireworks and in the end a big one, a finale—Hadia had offered the word—like in an orchestra.

“You’ll just know,” she says, but she has no idea when it will be, or if she will know the end when she sees it. She looks back at Baba, and even his mouth is open, and she can see his white teeth. His face flashes green. And he looks like he is also thinking that the sky looks beautiful. Also thinking, How can I look up without smiling? Then comes the sound of the rocket ones and Hadia can hear Amar’s laughter and the tiny, twisty explosions, and Baba’s face is red, then blue, then gold, and then dark again, just his teeth still bright.

THE SUN IS relentless. Layla sits with her back straight against the balcony wall, practicing her posture. Her younger sister, Sara, is beside her. They are not touching one another. It is their rule for sitting on the balcony on a hot day: any contact between the two of them could make the heat unbearable. She is comforted by the sounds of her street. The man who tries to sell pomegranates and mangoes. A boy who shouts at his friend with words forbidden to her. The honking of the cars and the clacking of a hoofed animal that walks by their house and into the bustle.

“You have a secret?” Sara whispers. Speaking softly is the other rule of the balcony, they come here only when they want no one to overhear them.

Layla wants to be the one to tell her. She reaches up to tug at one of the magenta petals of the bougainvillea above Sara’s head. This summer is the first time she has felt close to her sister. Before, Sara was just a little girl with whom she had the unfortunate fate of sharing a cramped bedroom. One she had to make sure wasn’t listening with her ear pressed to their door when Layla’s friends visited. Now she is the sister Layla whispers to late at night before they fall asleep. The one she goes to with her complaints about her strict teacher or if she wakes from her dreams alarmed. Sara is a light sleeper, a patient listener. She wakes as soon as Layla calls her name and is eager to be included, to be regarded by her as a young woman, as a friend.

“I might be getting married,” Layla says. She twists the orni around her finger until it is tight.

Sara asks her when and there is hurt in her voice, and Layla wonders if it is because she hasn’t told her until today, or if it is because it means she will be leaving soon. Later that night, the proposal would be coming with his uncle to speak with Mumma and Baba and to meet her.

“Mumma tells me it is a great proposal. That I have no reason to refuse it.”

Sara leans her head on Layla’s shoulder. Layla does not remind her of the balcony rule.

“I’m not sure. Mumma says he has a good job. And that he works very hard—he’s been an orphan for years. He moved there by himself, got a job, a place to live.” She does not know why she sounds like she is trying to convince her sister.

The wind rises. It moves through the branches of the bougainvillea and all the leaves quiver like clapping hands, their rustle a round of applause. It is one of Layla’s favorite sounds in the whole world.

The orni wrapped around her finger will not twist any tighter. She does not know what she will say. She has never had to make a decision so big before, so life-changing.

“Because there is no reason to say no?” Sara’s voice sounds like she is a child again.

Mumma had been eager to share the proposal with her when it came. She told Layla he was from a good family, that his parents had been respectable people before their passing, and he was one of the lucky ones who had gone to America. But to move so far from her family? I want you to have a good life, her mother had said to her, an enriched one, a pious destiny. Layla felt a strong intuition that if she listened to her mother, if she trusted her, if she aimed to please her, it would be all right. The little fears she felt now would be resolved somehow. After all, her parents would not find someone for her who would be unkind, or someone who was lacking in values. God would be pleased with her if she pleased her parents, and she would be rewarded.

“You could be like those women in the movies, the ones who say, ‘But, Babu-ji, I can’t marry him! I love someone else! The one who is forbidden.’”

Layla tells her to shush. The joke is not funny anymore. But something about the mention of his name excites her, and as soon as it does she feels a soft sadness. Raj sells ice cream outside of her school. He always nods when she walks by. Layla has not noticed him doing this with anyone else. She orders a scoop every few days—even when she does not want one. And once in a while, he will shake his head when she offers up her coins, and she will walk home with her gift. They have begun to joke about him. Raj and her future with him, the flavors of ice cream they would serve at their wedding, the successful business he will start all over Hyderabad.

THAT NIGHT LAYLA repeats his name in her mind: Rafiq. Will she go with him to America? What will the roads look like there, and the people in their houses? She cannot sleep. She tries to recall his visit, how he wore a light brown button-up shirt that did not suit his complexion. All evening she studied her own hands in her lap, the one knuckle redder than the rest, the unevenness of her fingernails. Mumma had advised her before he came: do not dare look up unless directly spoken to. But even then, Mumma said, do not look at him. She had stolen one glance just long enough to note the color of his shirt.

She calls Sara’s name in the dark and Sara mumbles a reply, rubs her eyelids, stretches a bit, and when she speaks again her voice is thick from sleep.

“You know who,” she says, suddenly aware that she is too shy to speak his name.

Layla laughs. Sara begins listing what she remembers: he smiled at Baba’s jokes but did not laugh, he did not eat the sweets Ma had made but did finish almost all of the almonds in the bowl of mixed nuts, he coughed into a folded cloth, he never started a conversation, just added to them, and he looked at Layla from time to time.

Sara continues, “Maybe he will know to close the curtains as soon as it is nighttime. And to wake as soon as the first alarm rings. Or he’ll be able to tell when you want to be alone and when you act like you want to be alone but you actually want him to speak to you.”

HADIA IS CONCENTRATING on curling the tail of the y when the phone in her classroom rings. She wants to make sure her handwriting is neat, just in case Baba is in a good mood that night and asks to see her schoolwork, so she steadies her hand and bites down on her bottom lip before remembering it is bruised. It pulses. Sometimes, Baba would tap at her papers and say to Amar, look, this is how you write properly. And Hadia’s happiness would turn into guilt when she saw the pained look on Amar’s face: having wanted Baba to notice, and wanting him to praise her still. Her teacher, Mrs. Burson, drops the chalk into the silver tray, steps to answer the classroom phone, and Hadia presses her nails into the skin beneath her wrist as she thinks, Please God, not again.

Mrs. Burson hooks the phone back on the wall and turns to look directly at Hadia. She nods at her. Hadia knows what this means. Her classmates begin to whisper. They shift in their seats. She hates when anything draws extra attention to her. She already looks so different from them, being the only girl in the entire elementary school who wears hijab. Even when her teacher calls on her for an answer, she blushes. She puts away her notebook, scoots her chair into her desk, and avoids looking at all of them except her best friend, Danielle, who waves as she walks out the door.

It is likely that nothing is wrong. She takes her time walking down the empty corridor, annoyed at Amar for embarrassing her again, for pulling her from her lesson. Her footsteps echo and she tries to quiet them by walking on tiptoe. Sentences from classrooms drift from open doors. Grades older than fifth grade, where they are talking about spelling, math, stars, and stories. She pauses at every open door just to see what those lessons are like. But what if, this time, it is not nothing? She thinks of grazed knees and broken bones. She thinks of hearing Amar cry out after he has hurt himself, how she recognizes his cry even if she hears it when they are at mosque and separated by a divider. How she rushes down the stairs or through the hallways until she is at his side, how she has to go, even if her parents are around. She quickens her pace. By the time she reaches the corner she is running, and the reflection of the lightbulbs on the floor blur beneath her.

The school nurse looks up from her paperwork at Hadia, who arrives breathless, and she welcomes her in with a wave that tells her all is well. Bad news is always delivered in a hurry.

“He’s in the sick room,” she says, and gestures down the hall, though Hadia knows where it is.

Hadia knows this too. Amar is lying on the tan bed wearing red corduroy pants and a white T-shirt, the outfit of his that always reminds her of a little bear, and as he shifts the paper cover crunches beneath him. The room is cool and gray. He looks fine, suffering only from boredom, blowing the hair in his face so it lifts up and falls on his forehead again, but he stands when she enters and waves at her as if he’s been waiting for her to join him at a tea party.

“Nothing,” he whispers in Urdu. He looks like a boy keeping a secret, excited to let her in on it.

“Then why are you here? Why did you call me?” she replies in Urdu as well, not wanting the nurse to overhear and confirm her suspicion that nothing is wrong. Her tone is harsh, like her mother’s.

“I didn’t want to be in class,” he says, and she glares at him. “And I didn’t want to be alone.”

She had been taking notes for Social Studies when the call came. They were learning about the American Revolution. She had not finished copying the board, and now it would be erased. She turns to go back.

Why do things always sound sadder in Urdu? Prettier too. She likes that they speak to each other in Urdu, how even speaking it feels like access to their secret world, a world where they feel like different people, capable of feelings she could not experience let alone speak of in English. She turns around and faces him. He looks worried and scratches his cheek. He is only six. First grade has just begun and he has had a hard time adjusting to the longer hours.

The year before Amar started kindergarten, there were three days when Mumma disappeared and Baba took them to a family friend’s house. Amar was almost four and it was his first time being away from Mumma. Hadia remembers asking Baba where Mumma was as Baba packed a duffel bag of their clothes and toothbrushes, but Baba gave her a silent look that said, Don’t you ask me again. They had never spent the night in anyone else’s home before. It was

A Place for Us

FATIMA FARHEEN MIRZA

Part One

Part Two

1